Nicholas Logsdail created Lisson Gallery in 1967 and pioneered conceptual art by selecting artists and supporting the production, presentation and sale of their work which focused on the idea or concept behind an artwork over expressive or descriptive aims. Lisson has been particularly successful in picking emerging artists who have achieved worldwide reputation later on like Turner Prize winners Anish Kapoor and Richard Deacon, amongst many others.                 Lisson is now one of the world’s leading gallery in contemporary art, and I had the pleasure to spend some time with Nicholas Lodsdail who ran us through the history of the gallery and how conceptual art has been evolving since its creation. During this fascinating interview, Nicholas also told us about the links between wine and art and finished by telling us his views on the future of the art he promotes. Olivier Bourseau: Nicholas Logsdail, thank you very much for taking the time. You created Lisson gallery in 1967 and you have been specialising in conceptual art. What is the core idea of the gallery? Nicholas Logsdail: So the gallery was created in 1967 and after all these years it is still flourishing. From the early 60’s to the late 1960’s we saw the emergence of Pop Art and then minimal art which is where when I kind of came in. I was studying art by then and I thought it was fascinating and I thought it was radical. And above all it had an intellectual rigour. There was something very convincing about it. In the sense that it was the next art historical evolutionary step of modernism at that time which was coming out of the beginnings of abstraction in the early 20th century. After the Second World War, the art world, given that New York and America was not very damaged by the war, many people working in culture not just artists, and many of them jewish, left Europe and went to America and many of them settled in New York. Out of that came the Modern New York School. But this posed a very difficult question for the artist, “where do you go from there?” What came out of that was conceptual art which is the art of ideas. So for the first time the artists believed that they had escaped the idea of the production of the material object, hence the name conceptual art. At the galley we have always been engaged with the present at anytime. And gradually it became clear through the British artists who were walking in that territory that for the next generation of artists coming up, there had to be some other way of dealing with things and the next generation of artist in this country were “Synoptists” almost exclusively, Tony Cragg, Anish Kapoor, Richard Deacon, and a number of others. And their observation was that there truly was no way beyond the conceptual art idea. So you had to go back into art history again and extract something else which brought the idea of metaphors back into the object making, metaphorical reference. And in my opinion this was a genuine historically valid development so we got very much involved with these artists. Picture below - Red Square by Tony Cragg - 2007 What followed that was the minimal conceptual art movement which was truly international even though it came out of New York thanks to the availability of inexpensive jet travel. For the first time a significant artist could be known all over the western world within a matter of 2 or 3 years. And thanks to this we saw this enormous explosion of interest in the late 70’s and early 80’s. This new phenomenon was called national internationalism. (For instance the British sculptors, the German expressionists amongst others), and out of that came the cult of the individualism of the artist. That brings us closer to the present! Surprisingly we are doing quite well, firstly because we have solid track record of getting it right over the years. I am sure that because of the current environment, we will see new artistic developments that will move forward the history of art. Because to me art is not just decorative objects, art is the artistic symbolisation of a new way of thinking, which is why scholars go and study art history for 5 to 10 years, so they understand the mechanisms very thoroughly, and they have a deep knowledge, so they can understand what is going to happen. O.B: How has conceptual art been evolving since 1967? Nicholas Logsdail: Conceptual art was in its formative state from the period of about 1965 to 1975. The younger artists have referenced back to the other artists because there was a sense that the material art had become too excessive and they wanted to reference back to this dematerialised idea. We have been working with these artists in the last 4 or 5 years: Jonathan Monk, Gerard Byrne, to name two. That’s a direction that will probably continue, especially in the difficult time that we are in, because it doesn’t require great production material costs, or anything like that. That’s an interesting development, we don’t know quite where it is going to go, but clearly some of these artists are extremely interesting. Picture below - Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor - 2006 O.B: The work of Lisson is to support and promote the work of young and upcoming artists. And you have been very successfully doing so since artists like Anish Kapoor and Richard Deacon amongst others won the Turner Prize. How do you find these young upcoming artists? Nicholas Logsdail: That is not exactly true. What we have done is for each generation, we have extracted the core artists. And so if you take artists like Tony Cragg, Anish kapoor, or a number of others like Sol LeWitt who sadly died a couple of years ago, when we started to working with them, they were young emerging artists, and in some cases unknown. These are artists who are in their mid to late careers now, and they have worldwide reputation. The idea with the historical gallery is that you are always interested in the developments, and out of these developments come the great artists of the future. This is why collectors pay a lot of attention to artists we introduce them to when they are young. If you are a collector and if you find the work interesting they you might buy it because there is an enormous price difference, because the work of the young artist is relatively inexpensive. And the artists are most grateful at that point and they need the support. These early relationships between art galleries and collectors are very important. To say that we support and promote the work of young and upcoming artists of course is true but that is not the “raison d’être”. The “raison d’être” is to discover great artists and to perform a very specific role. In terms of the Turner prize, we have had 8 or 9 nominees, and probably about 4 or 5 winners. Picture Below - Vincent by Richard Deacon - 2005 - Lisson Gallery O.B: Your art is very cutting edge and more intellectual than say a descriptive painting. What sort of clients do you attract? Nicholas Logsdail: If you are developing new talent, you are looking for intelligence, and the intelligence from the artist to being able to articulate clearly what the work is about in such a manner that the spectator, the collector can actually get their head around it rather than being totally confused and say I don’t understand this. And I think all significant art has this attribute. Insignificant art tends to be more on the decorative side. I have got nothing intrinsically against it but it is decoration more than fine art or high art. And so for people who don’t look at contemporary art very much, they get confused, because what they are looking for is an aesthetic that they are familiar with. Don’t forget that the Impressionists from the late 19th Century that are very easy to look at now, that people of that time were scandalised by the work. And most people did not take it seriously. So the whole history of art is punctuated by these great new events that happened that most members of the public find confounding because what they really think they want to see is what they are familiar with. And indeed many people will buy art they are familiar with and 10 years later they don’t understand why they missed the boat. They look at it and said: “That can’t be interesting”. But there is always a way to find out if you have the curiosity. And galleries have become more and more professionalised in the last few decades. There are very few galleries where you will not get an explanation or you can’t find out relatively easily what you are looking at if you can be bothered to ask. Again there is a parallel with wine because knowledge about wine is how you judge it. Without knowledge about wine, you might be drinking a very fine wine indeed, and you know it kind of taste nice, but you have no idea relatively speaking how good it is. And also I think you could say that people’s tastes have changed and it is not only French wines that people regard as being very distinguished and the winemakers all over the world have set their standards very high to try and challenge the great French vineyards. Same is happening in art. There are artists all over the world, that try to challenge the established context of western modernism, and that is one of the great challenges of the 21st century, because it is not going to be just London or NY or Paris, it is going to be Beijing and Shanghai and Mumbai, maybe even Abu Dhabi, or San Paolo and that is already happening. So how do we judge that, how do we incorporate that into what we already know? That’s one of the big challenges of the coming decade. O.B: So where in particular will creativity come from? Nicholas Logsdail: One of the curious things right now is that there is probably less clarity than there has been for some while as to where the next initiative is going to come from. And my suspicion is that it is not going to come from any specific place. Because if we are taking the idea of what is called globalism seriously which we have to, what’s happening is this communications revolution. We have communication with anybody anywhere in the world which is the 21st century version of jet travel. You don’t even have to go on the plane anymore to communicate or understand what the people are doing. The problem I find is that there is just a flood of information, such an abundance of information and we only listen to the one we trust. Don’t forget that in any era 80 or 90% of the cultural output, the commercial output, or whatever goes to waste and get forgotten about and maybe that is just a human thing or it is part of the capitalist system which is very much based on wastage and consumption. But the idea of Art is that it is beyond consumption. The great art endures and people will still be looking at it in 50 or 100 years time, and taking it very seriously. There is a great difference between great art and what is fashionable. And every year has its fashionable artists, and every year there are great artists. Sometimes the two coincides. But that is very unusual. O.B: Thank you very much Nicholas!